


They Might Be Giants

by PunkHazard



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Timelines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-27
Updated: 2013-07-27
Packaged: 2017-12-21 12:19:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/900232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PunkHazard/pseuds/PunkHazard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ancient Chinese Proverb: When the wind of change blows, some build walls. Others build Jaegers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Russia and China's joint military training exercises begin in the summer of 2017.

「This can't possibly,」 Cheung says as they step off the chopper and into the Vladivostok complex, teeth clacking, 「be summer.」

The three of them gamely stop themselves from outright voicing their fervent wishes to return to Hong Kong (despite the humidity, which can turn Hu from his usual collected self into a sweaty, frazzled shell of a human being), but when Marshal Pentecost reaches the dome, he actually stops to pat Jin sympathetically on the shoulder before going on his way. 

(They look _that_ miserable. It's a little shameful, really.)

「What was the Marshal doing here?」 Jin asks.

Cheung shrugs, scuffs his boots on the metal grating below their feet and leans on the nearest rail. 「Worried about communism?」 

「It'll be warm inside the training rig,」 Hu says, inhaling deeply. 「It'll be warm inside the training rig. It'll be warm inside the training rig.」

—Слабый,— a man snorts.

—Нет, дети.—

The tone isn't lost on any of the triplets, but when they turn around, all three with clenched fists and shoulders pulled back (hey, it works in Shanghai), the first thing the enormous stranger does is draw himself up to his full height. Cheung pauses. They're good, but even he knows how to pick his fights, and he asks, 「What did they just say?」

Jin tilts his head to the side. 「They pilot Cherno Alpha, the Kaidanovskys. But all I remember from the language primer is 'cafeteria' and 'bathroom'.」

「... we're going to be useless out here.」

「I don't think that was in the textbook.」

"Hello," Cheung says, wondering if there are any more pathetic ways to begin a conversation with a legendary Ranger. He's also beginning to question his own sense of foresight when he notices both Russian pilots are in short-sleeved shirts and military slacks. It's six degrees in Russia, but he supposes it _is_ their summer.

"We are here to welcome you to Vladivostok," the woman says in clipped English, turning a hard look on her husband. "I am Lieutenant Sasha Kaidanovsky."

"Aleksis," the man says, and he opens his mouth to say something else but he stops when Sasha raises a hand to silence him.

"Thank you, Lieutenant," all three of them say in unison, ducking their heads in polite bows. Then, "I'm Hu, this is Cheung, and this is Jin. I study harder than my brothers, so I will speak for all of us when we are addressed."

"We heard the future pilots of Crimson Typhoon enjoy basketball," Sasha says, unsmiling but not unkindly, "and Aleksis wanted to invite you to play a game."

Aleksis murmurs something, but falls silent when Sasha glares at him again, but her expression shifts to an indulgent smile when he returns the look with a sheepish smirk. 

「He said it was a bit more like inviting us to 'lose a game,'」 Hu quips. 「That _was_ in the textbook.」

「Is the gym heated?」

"We accept," Jin says excitedly, rolling his eyes when both his brothers punch him on the arm for speaking out of turn.

The gym is heated, but only marginally more than the rest of the complex. Cheung is pretty sure they turned up the temperature solely because of the visiting Chinese contingent, but he's not complaining. 

The four of them play two-on-two, Sasha sitting silently but amused on a nearby bench. It's different from their usual games, actually trying to score on each other— they have to stop themselves from automatically passing to Jin, slip up when he looks like he's about to pass and they forget that they aren't on the same team. 

Jin has no trouble with it, and spends the entire game passing to Aleksis, who stands by the hoop and puts the ball through— literally _puts_ , his height plus massive wingspan places his highest reach well above the basket.

「This isn't fair,」 Cheung pants at halftime. 「He's huge.」

「Alright. Thundercloud formation. Minus Jin, the traitor. We have prepared for this day.」

「 _Hey!_ 」

* * *

The cafeteria, as it turns out, is also heated. Three gigantic bowls of scalding hot soup (picked on Sasha's recommendation, a heavy spicy-sour broth laden with cabbage, meat and potatoes) in front of them and Cheung can't recall a time his brothers have ever dug into a meal so quickly. 

"I'm never leaving this place," Jin mutters emphatically with the hood of his sweatshirt pulled over his ears, sleeves drawn over his fingers (it's oversized for a reason) and his free hand wrapped around the base of the bowl, sapping its warmth. 

"So you like Russia," Sasha says with the kind of turn to her lips that Cheung knows means she's making fun of them. No one's allowed to make fun of them in Shanghai. That usually gets faces beaten in. 

Still. 

He can't feel his fingers.

"Russia is a beautiful country," Hu intones politely, looking exactly like both his brothers but somehow able to maintain an even inflection, "but I don't think she likes us as much as we would like to know her."

" _Good_ answer," Aleksis says, chuckling. "They know how to speak even when their toes are about to fall off."

"Your room have heat much higher," Sasha tells them, "but it is best you become used to the climate here. It will make you stronger."

"We will," Cheung answers sincerely, "in small steps."

Hu nods, shovels another spoonful of potatoes and soup into his mouth, and then he swallows. Licking his lips, he waits for Sasha to look at him before pointing at his bowl. "What is this called?"

Aleksis answers. "Соля́нка. Very good for keeping warm."

"And for building... you know." Sasha Kaidanovsky isn't known for her attempts at being delicate, but she says as gently as she's ever said anything, "Body."

"We have bodies."

"No, I mean... _body_. Muscle. You are all so thin."

Jin, situated comfortably on the bench between his brothers, is rapidly approaching the bottom of his bowl, and he grins when Cheung shifts a chunk of meat and more potatoes from his own bowl to his. "Not for long, if we eat like this every day."

Hu rubs his palm over the back of Jin's head, watching his brother practically inhale the rest of his food. "If you eat like this every day, it won't be muscle you're putting on."

* * *

「I like the Russians,」 Jin says, arms crossed behind his head half an hour after lights-out, in the full darkness of their room. 「I just can't stand their music.」

Ukrainian hard house, as they've learned it's called, is pounding through the shared wall of the room, and they're guests in Vladivostok so they're not about to complain, but the grating thump of its bassline shakes the ground, sends vibrations up through their beds and Cheung snorts, rolling over onto his side and pulling his pillow over his ears. 「Two more weeks. Besides, they'll turn it off soon.」

「You'd think the walls would be thicker for a base in Russia,」 Hu grumbles into his own pillow, sprawled on his stomach. He reaches for their basketball, which he keeps under his bed wedged between his boots, turns over and lobs it to Cheung from his position on his back.

Cheung grabs it with one hand, tosses it to Jin. He barks a laugh and groans, 「I'd rather hear Ukrainian hard house than the Kaidanovskys going at it, though.」

「You think that's what they're doing?」

「Isn't Aleksis our age?」 Jin asks, passing back to Hu.

「They're married, aren't they? Would _you_ turn down Sasha Kaidanovksy?」

「Well...」

「After learning about her taste in music...」

「I bet that's how they bonded,」 Cheung continues, now fully committed to grossing his brothers out, 「they're the only two people in the world who like this stuff.」

Hu hurls the ball back across the room. 「Shh! Thin walls!」

「They can't hear him, don't worry. Or... speak Chinese.」

「You don't know that. Everyone speaks Chinese nowadays. Like that Tendo guy we met in Tokyo, even though he sucks at it.」

Jin adds, catching the pass that Cheung sends his way, 「We can ask tomorrow. Payback for calling us skinny.」

「Aah, our little brother really doesn't value his life.」 Cheung's mock-disappointment draws a laugh from Hu, who catches the ball and pops it back under his bed. 「Did we spoil him too much?」

「I'm only twenty minutes younger than Hu, don't you two even start.」

* * *

"Maybe should eat more Russian food," Sasha says on the triplets' last day in Vladivostok, "you are already looking more healthy."

She gets three resigned, identical expressions in return. "We did put on weight," Hu says, declining to comment on whether or not any of them consider that a _positive_ thing, but he grins when Aleksis slaps him on the back. 

"Have safe trip back to Hong Kong," he says, "bring souvenirs next time."

"Or you can visit Hong Kong," Cheung counters, "and we'll make sure you're both taken care of."

It's a little pre-emptive for him to be offering hospitality while they're still technically in training (never mind that they're slotted to pilot a custom-built Jaeger), but Hu and Jin nod, both of them flanking Cheung. 

"We will consider it," Sasha says imperiously. "Maybe if kaiju attack your city, we will save it while you finish training."

The offer should be appreciated, Cheung knows, but he also recognizes the sharpness of Sasha's smile, the challenge in it, and he returns it, fiercely proud of his brothers, aware of their limits but not about to be outdone by the Russians. "We look forward to working with team Cherno Alpha," he says, "and we can't wait to see our kill count pass yours."


	2. Chapter 2

「The hands need more dexterity,」 Hu says, and Cheung waves off the head engineer's protest before the man can begin to argue. 「If you want us to pilot this Jaeger, we must be able to use our full potential.」

He has to explain, later to the Hong Kong Shatterdome's director, that every hand technique requires a different position, a specific placement of fingers for maximum effectiveness. What's a few million in cash to the lives of hundreds of thousands of Chinese citizens? (He switches tack halfway through to: "What's a few million CNY compared to commissioning a whole new Jaeger and training up a new set of pilots when this one is destroyed because the director didn't want build the best mech he possibly could?")

Hu and Jin draw up the plans while Cheung fields a call from Stacker Pentecost, once the Marshal gets news that they've decided to take design into their own hands. (This is, he's pretty sure, the beginning of their local mythology. The rest of the engineering team loves it; three arrogant punks from the street giving lip to the head engineer, but the ceremony of class and cooperation aren't totally lost on them. It's old-school Triad mentality, which Cheung doesn't really want associated with his brothers, but at least it keeps the nerds off their backs.)

"You know what you're doing?" Pentecost asks, wary but voice amused even over the laggy satellite connection.

Cheung gently reminds him, "I helped develop the software for a three-pilot Pons interface and my brothers were originally slated to be part of the engineering team. Electrical and mechanical. We know what we're doing."

"I'll have the PPDC allocate some more funding to the project, but try to stay within budget."

"Yes, sir," Cheung says, and waits for Pentecost to hang up first. Once he's sure the connection is cut, he puts the phone back into its cradle, grins at his brothers and announces, 「Buzzsaw hands.」

Jin adds, 「We can scale up the plasmacaster too.」

Hu holds up a hand. 「Would we go over budget?」

「We would be exactly on budget,」 Cheung says, dismissing him. 「I'm telling you, director's been skimming from the funds, he'll have to put it back.」

True to form, Hu takes his role as buzzkill seriously. 「Why do you always get like this when money is involved?」

「Have you forgotten every shopping trip ever?」

「Less talking, more designing,」 Cheung snaps. 「We'd probably need to scale back to three arms instead of four, but Crimson Typhoon should be able to kick. Or all that Muay Thai training is just going to go to waste.」

Jin pulls up a 3D blueprint and rattles off a list of specs before he finally says, 「Crimson's a bit top-heavy, but I think kicks are possible.」

「We'll need to alter a few things,」 Hu agrees, 「but nothing too drastic, since Crimson was designed for speed and balance anyway. Marshal Pentecost already put a hold on construction until we finish with a new design.」

「Guess it'll be a while yet before we'll actually get to fight any kaiju,」 Jin sighs.

「Or,」 Cheung interrupts, 「we'll be the first team to beat a five kaiju kill-count.」 

He's already calculating the amount of time it'll take to implement all their changes as he pulls up a draft of code for a three-pilot neural interface. It's nearly the same code as a two-person drift, with special care taken to distribute the mental load evenly, then ramp it up. The end result should be a 125 percent increase in capacity, but overclocking capability up to 150 percent with no lasting damage. They'll need it, especially with the complexity of Crimson's design. 

Dr. Lightcap did most of the original work, sent it over so he could comb through and tweak the specifications for Crimson Typhoon's particulars— mostly turning them up from her more conservative numbers. It's one thing for her to be concerned for their safety (he's grateful for it, really), and it's another thing entirely to know himself and his brothers, their limits and weaknesses, inside out.

* * *

Cheung has Hu thrashing in a chokehold on the mat when a dark head peers around the doorway of the Kwoon. He looks up, pauses in shifting his grip to a jointlock, and prompts Jin to step forward with a quick tilt of his head, right before he goes back to trying to grapple his brother into submission.

Their year of training in Japan comes in handy for situations like this and Jin asks in Japanese as he drops into a crouch to meet her at eye level, 「Marshal looking for us?」

Mako shakes her head, transparent pink clipboard clutched to her chest. 

「Is something wrong?」

Mako breathes in, stands up straighter. 「If it is not too much trouble, may I watch your training?」

「No problem for us. When you're bigger, maybe you can join.」

It was, in hindsight, probably the wrong thing to say. Mako turns a look on Jin that's equal parts innocent, deeply focused and devastated, much like the kind he gives his brothers when he wants something from them but this is the first time its effectiveness becomes apparent to him. 

(They're minutes apart, sure, but even in that span of time, the youngest has Privileges and as triplets, none of the anguish of wearing hand-me-downs.)

「Mako-chan... right?」

「Can you teach me? When I'm older? If I ever see you again?」

Jin opens his mouth to speak. Closes it. He looks over his shoulder, to where Cheung is sitting on the small of Hu's back, locking one arm behind his shoulder with a foot pinning his other wrist to the floor.

「Hey Mako-chan,」 Hu wheezes playfully (as playful as a wheeze can be) from across the room, 「I'll teach you if you can get my brother off my back. Don't hold back now.」

「If you're losing,」 Mako asks, tone curious, 「why would I want you to teach me?」

Immediately after, she slaps both hands over her mouth, eyes wide.

「The _mouth_ on this one,」 Jin crows, switching back to Chinese, 「no wonder the other kids are scared of her. Let's do it, brothers. She'll give the Marshal a nice surprise.」

Cheung rolls off Hu's back, saunters over and leans down to look Mako in the face. She's smiling, almost smug, and Jin's comment about her popularity doesn't seem to faze her in the least. He drops a hand to the top of her head, tilts her face back. 「Wait, look at that, she knows what you're saying. You speak Chinese, kid?」

「Little bit.」

Hu's stretching his arms as he joins them, glancing over Cheung's shoulder but hanging back. 「She's only been here for a month. Kids are scary...」

「Alright,」 Cheung says at last, cracking his knuckles, 「we can get her started on some self defense.」

Two hours later, Mako's on the verge of tears and she can't lift her arms and two out of three triplets are still practicing their forms, the last of them sitting with her on the mat while she recovers from a throw. It wasn't even that hard of a throw, but she'd been thrown many times today and had to stand back up on her own each time, and Hu and Cheung hadn't stopped working since she'd peeked in earlier, though they are at this point drenched in sweat and breathing hard. 

「I can keep going,」 she says, dark fringe pasted to her forehead, but Jin ruffles her hair and hands her a bottle of water instead.

「You're done for today, Mako-chan.」 Mako fights back a sniff, but she wipes her nose and Jin leans down to peer intently at her face, before smiling gently. 「We've been training for a lot longer, you know. Part of getting stronger is resting well.」

She'd been painfully formal with them all day, but on the edge of fatigue, Mako slips into casual Japanese, almost a whine. 「I don't want to rest, I want to be a pilot. We're leaving tomorrow.」

Jin calls across the Kwoon, 「Brothers! Let's call it a day.」

「What happened?」

「Did you make her cry, Jin?」

「Are you hurt, Mako-chan?」

「Are you tired?」

Mako shakes her head, scowling. 「I can keep going.」

「Yeah, she's done.」

「Should we find the Marshal?」

「He's probably busy.」

「I need a shower.」

「Let's do something else,」 Hu says. 「What do you like to do, Mako-chan?」

Mako doesn't answer, staring up at him instead with an intensity that would have unnerved him if she were three feet taller and not adorable.

「Come on, Mako-chan, even we're tired.」 Hu's voice is very deliberately relaxed, almost cajoling. 「You can go take a shower and come back here to meet us once we're done taking ours, okay? We'll do whatever you want.」

She nods reluctantly, taking her little pink clipboard with her and trudging slowly out of the Kwoon— whether from disappointment or muscle aches, they don't know but when they step out of the locker room, fresh from their showers with towels thrown over their shoulders, Mako's standing just outside with a DVD case in her hands.

Jin turns the box over to read the back, then hands it to Cheung. 「Sailor Moon. Didn't that used to come on before reruns of One Piece?」

「You mean reruns of One Piece used to come on after Sailor Moon,」 Hu retorts. 

「It had a good story!」

「And Usagi got naked every episode.」

「Well, yeah.」

「Hey, cut it out.」 Cheung punches them both in the arm, discreetly gesturing at Mako's face, with her crinkled nose and furrowed brows, then switches to Japanese. 「Yeah, we can watch Sailor Moon with you, Mako-chan. We have a projector in our room. Do you want to walk or do you want to pilot?」

「Pilot?」

She barely has time to react before Hu and Jin seize her by an elbow and a knee each, and swing her up onto Cheung's shoulders, announcing in unison, in an exaggeratedly robotic voice, 「 _Conn-Pod docked._ 」 

Jin leads the procession out of the room with a lurching, winding gait. Cheung ducks in the doorway so he doesn't bang her head, but makes a point to move in an appropriately Jaeger-ly fashion. 「Kaiju at 12 o'clock,」 Hu says, egging her on, 「you better not let it get away, Mako-chan! Hong Kong's in danger!」

They make a long detour around half the complex chasing Jin down (Mako steering by tugging on Cheung's ears), though it really only takes about a minute for him to 'die'. The triplets pass Herc Hansen in the hall on his way to a meeting and he raises an eyebrow at the sight but laughs and takes the time to collapse against the wall and give a subdued death rattle when Hu points at him, prompting Mako to open fire. (His son is Mako's age; this game is familiar to him.)

Half an hour later, Jin's snoring on their couch, head on Hu's shoulder. Cheung's turning down the volume on the TV while Mako's nodding off next to him, head dipping and snapping up before she finally gives in, slumping against his side and then slipping down to fall asleep with her head on his leg. He drops his sweatshirt, a clean one, onto her shoulders and Hu's yawning, so Cheung hands him a blanket (which he dutifully pulls over both himself and Jin before dropping off himself). 

When Pentecost nudges their half-open door all the way, a little while later, he pauses in the entrance and gives Cheung an amused look.

"We were going to look for you, but you were in a meeting," Cheung says quietly by way of justifying why they didn't return her immediately, but Pentecost nods understandingly and steps inside.

"I hope she didn't bother you too much."

"It's no trouble, Marshal. I hope you don't mind that we taught her a few nerve strikes." 

Mako stirs, as if responding to Pentecost's voice, and grins sleepily up at him before tearing away from Cheung's hoodie and scrambling to her feet. 

"What do we say, Mako?"

She turns to face Cheung, folds her hands in front of her and ducks her head. "Thank you."

"No problem, kid. Anytime you're in Hong Kong, you can come find us. Don't forget your DVD."

Pentecost is already turning to leave when Mako gestures that Cheung should lean forward. He does— and she rushes up, pecks him on the cheek and dashes out of the room before he can comment. The Marshal turns around in the doorway just as she latches onto his hand and starts to drag him out, and Cheung realizes belatedly that both his brothers are awake and grinning at him.

「Oh no,」 Jin snickers, 「I think she's got a crush.」

「But brother is so big and strong, is it any wonder? And he's so handsome!」

「That square, manly jaw!」

「Those arms!」

Cheung smacks them both in the face with one of the couch cushions. 「Shut up!」

* * *

They've drifted plenty of times in training, but in their Jaeger, each component lovingly designed and manufactured, it feels different. (Cheung won't go as far as saying there's another presence with them, but it's close enough, their minds melding on a scale much larger than a computer in the sim room.)

Their first practical drift is, unfortunately, a direct consequence of an attack on Osaka. 

Jin leaves his dogtags and Hu takes off his shades for the fight. They've also grown accustomed to suiting up without scientist help, so they're quick, especially with Cheung breathing down their necks. The flight is four hours long and they spend most of it playing Big Two and arguing house rules (of course triples are allowed, they're _triplets_ , it's _symbolic_ , who cares about casino rules when they're in a private jet to Osaka?) though they probably would have been better off taking a nap.

"We usually christen Jaegers with cat Is," Pentecost says to them during the briefing, "but this is an emergency. You will be deployed with Cherno Alpha in Osaka Bay."

The fight takes two hours, most of it just slicing away at the monster underwater whenever it swims past them, with Cherno Alpha pushing it back each time it makes a rush for shore. Crimson Typhoon drags the kaiju's body with it for the research team when they return to the shallows, another hour of work. And once they've pinged the Shatterdome for the airlift to land, all three pilots climb out onto Crimson's shoulder to wait for the choppers. 

Some hundred meters away, the Kaidanovskys have opened Cherno Alpha's chest compartment, removed their helmets. Jin waves, grinning when they return the gesture, and then falling back, letting them put their arms around each other and retreat into the cockpit.

Hu leans against Crimson's collar, the protective ridge around its conn-pod, and cants his head toward the horizon. He doesn't need to say it, really, their brains are still buzzing from the neural handshake and he can still feel his brothers in the periphery of his mind, but he wants to hear his own voice again, similar to theirs but distinct. 「Sun's going down.」

「Reminds me of when—」

「Taipei 101.」

「Yeah.」

Cheung sits first, feet braced against the slope of Crimson's armor. Jin and Hu settle on either side of him, Jin with one elbow on his shoulder, using it as an armrest, and Hu deliberately wrapping his fingers around his wrist. Their mental contact is fading, slowly, and it's usually times like this, right after a run in the simulator, that they would reach for the ball and play a game, extend it a little, but there's not nearly enough room for that.

Jin says, 「I really thought we were going to die when it almost squeezed through Crimson's arm.」

「We know.」

It takes nearly ten minutes for the choppers to arrive. They sit for the remainder of the wait in silence, slowly coming down from the high of their neural handshake. They're different enough, individually, that they don't lose track of themselves inside the drift— which is fortunate because memories coincide, merge, and instead of the memory of himself getting punched in the eye, sometimes Cheung will catch a glimpse of it from the side and cringe at the way his face looked.

That's not so bad in itself, until the empathy hits, because he remembers how much it hurt (not a whole lot, when you've gone too numb from fatigue to care about hairline fractures in your face) but his brothers always seem to remember blows to each other being more painful than they actually were and their drift ends up becoming a jumbled, messy feedback loop of heartache, which is silly. They're done with that. There's no point looking back. 

(None of them remember their street fighting days fondly; too many hours spent patching each other up, too many scars from unexpected weapons, too many days separated and never quite enough food to eat if they wanted to afford books about Jaeger development, texts from the academy. There's one way off the streets and they knew it came down to education; recognizing and taking the opportunity when it presented itself and they didn't know exactly what Stacker Pentecost's deal was when he visted Hannibal Chau, but they'd make sure to leave an impression whenever he did.

It's paid off, all of it.)

The triplets touch down in Osaka first and have some time to speak with the Russians but their meeting is brief. A quick assessment on both their parts of the other team's condition, the usual formalities, Sasha and Aleksis congratulating them on their first assignment, though they don't pull their punches with the criticism.

("When cooperating with other Jaeger, do not move close behind them;" "Always alert other team to movements, not everyone can check radar all the time;" "Stop talking about dinner over public comm; is unprofessional and makes me hungry.")

The Hong Kong staff greets them with a thunderous cheer as they step off the chopper and onto the loading dock at their home base. Journalists are closing in, trying to take close-ups of their armor after their debut fight, their faces, and the three of them pull together on instinct, Jin in the middle with his arms around their waists and he grins for the cameras. 

「Tell us about the fight!」 one man yells, shoving his mic toward them, and for his trouble, Jin leans forward and says to a roar of collective laughter, 「We couldn't have done it without each other.」

(And that's all any of the triplets cares to tell the world, really.)

「We would like to to thank everyone for their support,」 Hu adds diplomatically, 「and hope everyone remembers protocol in the event of a kaiju attack. Stay safe.」

Cheung doesn't bother (he smiles at a few of the cameramen though— right before he plows past them, through if they don't back away in time), and he's the one who breaks past the gaggle, both brothers clinging to the shell of armor on his shoulders until they make it into Personnel Only territory inside the dome.

They stick around the hangar long enough to be stripped of their drivesuits, change back into their civvies and stagger back to their room, collapsing onto Jin's bed, the closest to the door, as the adrenaline rush from completing their first mission wears off. 

「One down,」 Cheung says fiercely, grabbing Jin's wrist and reaching over his head to curl a fist into Hu's shirt, half-propped up on one elbow and feeling their pulses pound in exact rhythm under his palms. 

「One day at a time,」 Hu breathes, ankle hooked over Jin's, cheek pressed to the bony ridge on Cheung's wrist. 「Did you feel it?」

He doesn't need to specify; a thrum of excitement foreign to all of them, that hadn't been in any of their other drifts, something reaching for and probing their minds, settling comfortably and happpily in the synapses of their interface. Jin shuts his eyes, holds his breath and listens to the sound of his brothers' breathing, tries to catch that presence, chase it into his mind but it's gone, or too integrated to be isolated. 

「I love you both,」 he jokes, 「but I feel much better knowing a 250-foot robot is watching our backs.」

* * *

They should theoretically be resting, but overseeing Crimson's repairs has become as much part of their routine as daily training. It's usually nothing more than replacing bits of armor, lubing up its joints and a test run on the Jaeger's more delicate moving parts. Jin likes to crawl in with the other mechanics and get his hands dirty, but he's the only one; Cheung and Hu usually pick up food from the mess hall and bring it into the hangar to watch until Jin gets hungry enough to join them, finally.

(It's hard to believe that one of them is more popular than either of the others— they're identical, after all, and spend every waking hour together. But only Jin walks around covered in grease with the straps of his threadbare racerback tank about to slip off his shoulders, stretched and half-torn from when it gets caught between gears or on sharp edges. 

There's a point of diminishing returns somewhere after the fifth spilled box of powertools in the complex, when he starts becoming a _distraction_ rather than an asset to the maintenance team.)

Cheung and Hu usually browbeat Jin into washing his hands before he sits down, because if he's going to leave dark streaks of machine lubricant everywhere, he better at least keep it off the food. 

「Oh,」 Jin says abruptly, on their way back to their room, whipping a flash drive out of a pocket, 「and I found it.」

「Found what?」 Cheung and Hu ask in unison.

「Evangelion. It's the condensed movie version, so you don't have to watch the entire season. I was saying we should watch it a while back, remember?」

Cheung pushes his shades from forehead to crown, then snags an old magazine up from the couch before dropping onto the cushions. 「What?」

「That anime he told us about,」 Hu supplies helpfully from his desk. 「When we were kids, remember?」

「I'm not watching any more of his anime,」 Cheung says, which they all know is a filthy lie because they've spent enough time training in Tokyo, a hotbed of kaiju activity, that they don't even need subs to watch anymore and when he hears the dialogue— cheesy, dramatic, subdued, whatever— his inner cinephile gets the better of him and he always joins them.

Besides, if a kaiju attacks right after one of their marathons, he'll get a blow-by-blow recount of the movie while it's still fresh on his brothers' minds anyway, with additional commentary he doesn't need, that'll fly right over his head while they're chattering about it.

(Coincidentally, Hu and Jin always try to sync their viewings to approximately just before a kaiju shows. Suiting up takes a lot of time, especially given how much of their total period drifting is spent in transportation.)

Jin makes his way over to their projector and pops his drive into the slot. 「Just 'cause you cried at the last Shinkai movie we watched. Don't worry, this one is someone else.」

「I didn't. I had something in my eye.」

「Brother had something in both eyes,」 Hu says, grinning. 「Tears.」

「Shut up. Start the movie.」


	3. Chapter 3

—Welcome to Hong Kong,— Hu says in his heavily accented but grammatically correct (he'd done the research for the phrases beforehand) Russian. —We will show you around town once you have settled in and rested, Lieutenants.—

"Russian is not an easy language to learn," Sasha says, surprised but pleased. "You are doing well."

Aleksis leans over her head, mouth curved in a grin under his thick beard. 「We are also studying Chinese.」

「Wow!」

「Did you hear that?」

「We've only been working on English...」

"Chinese is also not an easy language to learn." Hu is calm, but grinning wide, it'd been nearly five years since they last met. "It's an honor to hear our old friends speak it. Maybe you can practice more during dinner tonight, when we welcome you officially?"

"A Winter Festival party?"

"It's our birthday," Cheung cuts in, "so we wanted to celebrate with the Lieutenants, in return for the hospitality you showed us in Vladivostok."

「And brother wants to complain about the Australians somewhere outside of the Dome. The young one won't stop crying about having to bring his own fork to the mess hall and his father won't beat him.」 Jin shrugs. 「Won't let us do it, either.」

「 _We. Are. In. Hong Kong._ If he hates chopsticks so much, he can go back to Australia.」

Aleksis runs a hand over his beard, nodding, eyes closed in concentration, but his lips quirk into a small grin when Cheung falls back into Chinese. "The Americans, too," he agrees, "they come to Russia, keep demanding we turn heat up in Shatterdome. Maybe heat is low because we have more important things to be doing with electricity!"

"Three hundred million people and they think they own the world."

"Is obnoxious. Just put on jacket."

—Anyway,— Hu says, addressing Sasha and deftly turning the conversation away from talking trash about their fellow Rangers, —is there anything you do not eat?—

—Food is food. If you are picky in Vladivostok, you do not get any. _You_ have all been eating well, I see.—

Hu grins, puffs out his chest. Compared to when they had first met the Russians, years ago, he and his brothers had bulked up considerably— most of it deliberate, but a good chunk of the added mass simply from being inside the Jaeger cockpit, moving the rig against its own weight. That, and the six-hour training sessions, daily. —We will show you to your rooms and brief you on the layout of the base, then come to meet you at seven. Is that acceptable?—

—That sounds good.—

* * *

—The fruit drink is fitting for your size,— Aleksis teases after dinner, which is unfair, really, because the triplets are already taller than just about everyone else in the shatterdome, it's not their fault Russians are genetically _mutated_.

"Big enough for all three of us," Hu counters with a grin, brandishing five plastic straws and nudging the Flaming Volcano to the center of the table. Their area is getting crowded (it's uncommon for any of the pilots to leave the Shatterdome, so a few hundred citizens have been trying to cram themselves into the restaurant since dinner began), but Aleksis manages to block off most of the cameraphones with his size and Sasha is intimidating enough that her immediate vicinity is empty.

—We are having vodka,— Sasha says, waving away the offer, but smiling when the other triplets immediately select their straws, pointedly picking different colors. They fidget, and smack each other in the face with the little plastic tubes until a bottle of vodka and two shot glasses finally arrive at the table. Aleksis twists the metal top off with practiced ease (drawing a round of appreciative cheers from the Wei Tang clan), and dumps a third of it into the triplets' bowl (which does not get a round of applause as he had expected, but three apprehensive looks instead).

Aleksis peers back at them. —You don't drink?—

Cheung: "Not much."

Jin: "No."

Hu: "No."

The expressions on both Lieutentants Kaidanovsky are unfamiliar to Cheung, but the belated realization that it's bewilderment, with a good dash of astonishment and pity, hits him hard. "Alcohol was expensive," he says simply, hoping that the nuances of etiquette and communication in Hong Kong have osmosed into their old comrades, and that he doesn't sound as wary as he feels, "and so was school."

He can't understand the rapid-fire Russian that comes next, and the Kaidanovskys aren't prone to gesticulation, but Aleksis ends the exchange, pecks Sasha on the cheek and he leans over the table to look all three of them hard in the eye. "If you drink, we will not allow you to do stupid things, and will make sure everybody returns to Shatterdome before lights out. Is what friends do. Yes?"

(Cheung has no idea why people consider Aleksis Kaidanovsky to be unpredictable or violent— or maybe it's just that none of the Wei Clan have ever gotten on his bad side— he's enough of a monster on the basketball court, what kind of an idiot would want to seriously incur his wrath?)

"Thank you," they say in unison. 

"Drink," Sasha says, pouring herself and her husband a shot of vodka. Aleksis takes three bottles of beer from under his seat, pops their tops, then hands them to the triplets. 

The moment everyone has a drink in hand, he raises his shooter and extends it. 

—С днем рождения.—

「幹杯！」

The triplets down their beers, two shots of vodka each, and a while later, when they finally start on the Flaming Volcano, accidentally bump heads leaning over the bowl. Coordination shot but spirit undimmed, their second try is a success. They've nearly finished the first long sip when the flash and click of a smartphone camera goes off.

"A good memory for your birthday," Sasha says, promptly e-mailing them the picture. "Before Americans flood the base and you have constant headache again."

Hu asks blearily, not sure he wants to go through the struggle of taking out his phone and checking, "Because we won't remember anything in the morning?"

Aleksis claps a hand on his shoulder, voice rumbling almost sympathetically. —Да.— 

Cheung drops his face into his palm. 「We're going to be too hung over to deal with the Americans tomorrow. They're so _annoying_. Always fighting and yelling, even that weird little scientist. Almost as bad as Ukrainian hard house.」

「Ooh,」 Jin says, laughing, 「brother is so drunk.」

"We make promise to bring you back safely," Sasha answers, tone deadly serious. "That is only reason you still live."

「We should probably go.」

"Yes," Aleksis say, hauling Cheung up by the arm, "now would be good time to go back to Shatterdome. Sasha and I have new CD."

「Oh, no.」

"Oh, yes."

Sasha waits for Hu and Jin to stand up, grabs them by the elbows when they start to look unsteady on their feet, and she manually steers them out the door.


	4. epilogue

Cherno Alpha's maintenance team is small, compared to the support network Crimson Typhoon and Striker Eureka have behind them. Its armor was solid enough and the tech old enough that the Russians barely needed the full breadth of manpower to keep it in fighting shape. 

Faces stony as parts are brought, one by one, into the repair bay as they're recovered, Cherno Alpha's maint team is already mobilizing, moving toward the scrap metal with Geiger counters, tracks through the smudges of machine grease on their faces the only sign of mourning.

"Excuse us," Cheung says, setting the Kaidanovskys' boombox down on their table in the hangar, where it usually sat whenever the couple would gear up. He turns the volume knob to its maximum, hits play and inhales deeply as the throbbing, pounding music starts reverberating off the walls. Jin peers over his shoulder. The Russian contingent stares at them, first in shock, but they seem to shake out of it once the hook starts. "New CD," he says.

It's not a truce— a truce requires full participation from both ends, a mutual agreement, and for all the reasons Crimson Typhoon's team had butted heads with Cherno Alpha's, there had always been the underlying understanding and solidarity between competent, effective pilot teams. 

Hu would call Raleigh trash for abandoning his duty for five years and coming back only to endanger everyone in the Shatterdome, but the worst he'd say about the Russians was that they had awful taste. Except all three of them would say it together, and the Kaidanovskys would threaten them with severe bodily harm, but they had never actually come to blows. They didn't need a truce.

"We never got to say this," Cheung says, "but it's been an honor to fight alongside the Lieutenants Kaidanovsky. I hope they knew that."

"Your brother was great Ranger," Cherno's head engineer replies, clapping both of them on the shoulder. "You have made country and comrades proud. Lieutenant Sasha, she say if she had sons and brothers, she would have been happy if they were like you."

「We're Aleksis's age,」 Jin laughs, startled, but there's a watery undercurrent to his voice and Cheung automatically wraps an arm over his shoulders, drags him close. 

Another technician, a young woman this time, pipes up solemnly, "Except she say they would have better taste in music."

Cheung smiles. He'd been needing a laugh, and it's not much to go on, but he offers anyway, "Do you need help here? This is a big project for a team two hands short."

"You are technicians?" 

At Jin's nod, the engineer beckons them toward the mangled remains of Cherno's cooling tower and the rest of the team parts ahead of them, closes behind them and folds them in. "Call me Andreyev," he says, and points to a young man in work slacks, "and that is Ulanov." An older woman in a faded olive-green jumpsuit the same color as the Kaidanovskys' jackets, "Petrov," and then around the rest of the circle as the Russians spread out, Andreyev's voice even and steady, nearly as easy to get lost in as the Vladivostok Shatterdome. 

_Maslov, Kurdin, Yeltsin, Dmitriyev, Gorbachyov..._

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. okay so PPDC official and imdb both say a. kaidanovsky is the woman and s. is the man but doerksen refers to her character as sasha and maillet calls his aleksis so i'm going by what the actors say and didn't do any narrative backflips to accommodate the discrepancy (the novel is also in line with what the actors say, so).  
> 2\. speech in brackets is mostly chinese, speech in emdashes is russian (and feel free to correct me wherever, since i'm not a RU speaker).  
> 3\. so [there was a picture](https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/374396_533696490025307_1774018048_n.jpg) and that's why this happened. 's on the luu triplets' [facebook page](https://www.facebook.com/LuuTriplets). (go like that shit, you won't regret it.)  
> 4\. i imagine cherno and crimson teams are actually fairly chill around each other, but they get super judgmental around the english speakers. pentecost listens in sometimes and thinks it's hilarious.  
> 5\. the original proverb says 'when the wind of change blows, some build walls, others build windmills'. the title was a short chain of loose associations but i think it works!!  
> 6\. this fic is basically all my crimson typhoon headcanon crammed into one story. trying to stay in line with the triplets' chapter in 'wake' as well as mika's 'three golden bulls' worth' but obviously i'm probs not gonna be totally successful.


End file.
